Flipkart launches mobile version of website hoping to woo more users

Flipkart, which had killed its mobile website in favour of a standalone application, has re-launched a mobile version of its website.Jayadevan PK&Pankaj Mishra | ET Bureau | November 10, 2015, 08:38 IST

Amid raging debates on whether India’s consumer Internet firms should ditch websites in favour of mobile apps, the country’s largest ecommerce company, Flipkart, has found a ‘middle path’.

Flipkart, which had killed its mobile website in favour of a standalone application, has re-launched a mobile version of its website, which gives users an experience close to its mobile app. “The web application we are launching today will give you a native experience without having to download the app,” said Piyush Ranjan, CTO and head of engineering at Flipkart.

While there are more mobile-only users (70 million) than those on the desktop (60 million), nearly 55 million continue to be on both these platforms. With the new interface that brings the best of web and app experience, Flipkart is aiming to woo more users. The company has 50 million registered users.

The new interface, which the company claims to be the first such offering globally, combines the snappy mobile app experience with the ease of surfing standalone websites.

The homepage looks more “Google-like” with a search engine at the centre. Users who log into Flipkart.com using a mobile phone and the latest Chrome and Opera browsers will see the new Flipkart web application. In a first, Flipkart’s engineers worked closely with engineers at Google, to enhance the ability of Google’s Chrome browser to make websites as powerful as mobile applications.

Due to constraints, mobile websites are usually a toned down version of a company’s standalone mobile application (also called native app) or desktop version. But with the changes proposed by Flipkart engineers and rolled out in the latest version of Google Chrome, the new mobile web experience can be as powerful as the app.

“We started by saying how can we give the exact experience as an app in the mobile web. We took a list of things to Chrome and said can you support this behaviour. They went and modified Chrome and we launched a new mobile website on top of it,” said Ranjan, a former Google executive.

While native mobile apps give a better user experience, they also have limitations. For instance, the app needs to be updated constantly and many users drop out in the process. Apps also take up more space on a device and in countries like India, users tend to uninstall apps that take up space.

The new mobile web application does away with all those problems while retaining the functionalities of a mobile app, said Ranjan. “This is going to be an open web standard such that all the mobile web applications will soon rival native applications,” said Ranjan whose team is also in talks with other browser makers such as Opera and Firefox.

Earlier, Flipkart put its plans to shut its website on hold. “If it is done right, there is no reason. Uber.com can give you the same experience as Uber application,” said Ranjan.

Last month, Flipkart offered an app-only sale for online buyers, a move seen as the company's intent to shift completely away from its website. But many Indian users continue to shop on their desktops.